49. Wild Planet by The B-52s

 49. Wild Planet by The B-52s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcXMq_DvP6M&list=OLAK5uy_kR1JLYLeMeGaAw7UGi169_0Ml8ZPUa9ZI

Because Cuts Like a Knife and Bat Out of Hell are two albums that bring up such fond memories of my friendship with Scapell, I hesitate to say too much about the albums for fear that any new information I dredge up might taint those memories. 

Actually, that's not completely true. I can share that Bryan Adams was the first famous live musician/band I saw in concert. He opened for Journey during the concert at the Mini-Dome during my junior year of high school. Besides playing all of his hits from Cuts Like a Knife, I remember that Bryan made a big deal of getting the crowd to yell "F--- You!" as loud as possible. And for some reason, that doesn't seem like that particular instance of mass public cursing would taint my memories of cruising the streets of Arimo with Scapell in Old Blue.

But it would be EXTREMELY easy to take the fond memories of hearing Bat Out of Hell in Scapell's basement and taint them with disturbing images and stupid stories of Meat Loaf's ridiculous behavior both behind and in front of the camera. So in my effort to maintain at least a few pure memories of time spent in Scapell's basement,  I try to ignore Meat Loaf as much as possible. 

However, there is one album that reminds me of Scapell that I can comment on in detail because my memory is of him not particularly liking the album. This memory is from when I played Wild Planet on the tape recorder while we all painted the Fink's house yellow for a scout service project, which was a big deal because up until that day, I believe the Fink house had always been pink. Why anyone would want to paint their house a color that rhymes with their last name is beyond me. But then again, there isn't a color that rhymes with "Olson," so I may just not understand how strong of a temptation that might be.

What I remember of that service project is that since we knew it would be boring to paint a house for two hours straight, I'd brought a pile of tapes that I'd recently received after joining the Columbia Records and Tape Club. We listened to some of them, and Sheldon liked a few. But when I pressed play on Wild Planet, he expressed what I can only characterize "instant revulsion." I think I managed to get "Private Idaho" and "Quiche Lorainne" played before Scapell carried out a full-on rebellion against my DJ-ing of the paintfest. And so the Eject button got pressed on Wild Planet before he ever got to hear "Party Out of Bounds," "Dirty Back Road," "Runnin' Around," and "Devil In My Car"--four songs that by their titles would seem to qualify as Scapell-approved music.

The reason I ordered Wild Planet as part of that initial penny's worth of music from CR&TC was that one day while I was hanging out with Chris at the Watkin's house, Barry happened to mention that he liked the song "Quiche Lorraine." I think that was in part because both the Nielsen and the Watkins families had miniature poodles for indoor pets, and since Quiche was a poodle about two inches tall...well, you can't get much more miniature of a poodle than that. Anyway, when I saw that Wild Planet was one the 13 tapes I could get for just one measly cent, I ordered it up. 

Of course, being an Idaho farm boy, "Private Idaho" was my favorite song from the tape, followed by "Quiche Lorraine." But the rest of the songs have a pretty steady level of quality, and I like them all equally as much. With the exception of "53 Miles West of Venus"--which is mainly an instrumental in which the girls just sing a chorus of "53 Miles West of Venus" repeatedly through the whole song--all of them have and interesting mix of guitar, drums, and synthesizer with quirky lyrics half-shouted by Fred Schneider. 

On a side note, for some reason, ever since hearing Wild Planet, I've thought that it would be fun to hear Fred sing a collection of Primary songs--especially "Give Said the Little Stream." Can't you just hear him sing/shout, "Give. Said. The LIT-tle STREAM. Give-oh-give. GIVE-oh-GIVE!"

I'm not sure why I associate his album with Scapell like I do. I suppose that maybe after being hit in the nuts so many times by balls thrown by Scapell, I might have derived some sort of twisted pleasure out of having done the equivalent of a nut-punch to Scapell's ears. All I know is that the older I get, the more precious my memories become of the time I spent in Arimo with my friends. And since Scapell's house was the site of the majority of hijinks we had together--like the Chopstick Spaghetti Dinner Date--any music that reminds me of time spent with Scapell just seems to be extra worthy of being included in my Top 60 album list.

(SNIPE WAVE!)